Tips To Grow Your Twitter

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This mission of this article is to provide the best possible answer to the question:

What innovative strategies can be used to get more followers on Twitter?

There are many tips in this article that can literally skyrocket your Twitter following.

This article starts off with online things you can do to getmore Twitter followers, and wraps up with real-world offline methods to achieve the same goal.

These powerful tips for building a strong Twitter brand can attract literally tens of thousands of followers, or more!

Online Ways to Get More Twitter Followers

1. Leverage Your Other Social Media Profiles

Link to your Twitter profile from your other profiles across the web. Facebook, YouTube,Linkedin, etc.

On your Facebook page include a link to your Twitter profile in the Websites section.

On YouTube you can link to your Twitter profile in your bio, and in the description section for videos. You can also mention your Twitter username in your videos, or watermark it as text on top of the video.

2. Link to Your Twitter Name in Your Email Signature

With every email you send you have an opportunity to link the recipient(s) of your Twitter profile.

I use a cool email signature service called WiseStamp that includes a twitter icon in my email signature.

If you don’t want to use wisestamp to include an image link you can simply use a text link that says you should follow me on Twitter here.

3. Tell People They Should Follow You On Twitter

4. Tweet Awesome Content

If you can get more retweets you can get more followers. Every retweet you get should

help you net a few new followers. How many new followers a retweet gets you depends on who retweets you.

Share awesome content you will get more retweets, and more followers. When people visit your Twitter page and see that you are tweeting awesome content they will see the value in following your stream, and will be more likely to follow you.

Doing this causes your retweet to show up in their mention stream, which is more visible than retweeting in the new one-click style.

13. Unfollow People Who Don’t Follow You

For those who don’t own a Twitter marketing program like TweetAdder there is a free alternative called Manage Flitter that creates a list of all people who don’t follow you and makes it easy for you to unfollow them.

14. Tell Your Contact List to Follow You

Send an email to your existing contact list letting them know that you are on twitter, and that they should be following you.

One way to do this is to use an emboldened post-script in any newsletters you might send.

15. Tweet During Peak Times

Check out this post I wrote about everything you need to know about timing your tweets so you can get your tweets more exposure.

The more exposure your tweets get the more followers you will pick up in the process.

16. Participate in Trending Topics

Trending topics are visible to thousands of people at once.

Participating in a trending topic can give your tweet more exposure than it normally would.

With more exposure your tweets have a better chance of spreading, and this can net you a bunch of new followers in the process.

17. Follow Highly Relevant People

The more relevant the people you follow are, the better the chance is that they will follow you back.

TweetAdder can help with this by allowing you to target people to follow based on the keywords they use in their bio, or in their tweets.

The best way to ensure you are building relevant connections is to check out people for yourself.

18. Engage with Twitter Giants

If you can engage Twitter Giants, you can potentially get a large amount of exposure if they respond to you.

Your chances of getting the attention of a Twitter Giant grows as your following grows. Be persistent. Get them on lists and tweet their original content. Mention them for #FollowFriday.

I engage with Twitter Giants on a regular basis and I’m sure that if you keep trying you can do the same.

19. Use a Tweet Button in Your Blog Posts

Sites with twitter share buttons installed get seven times the twitter mentions as websites without them.

Twitter recently launched the official tweet button, and I recommend you use it.

If you install this button into your pages or posts manually you can also choose to have the button recommend people to follow after a tweet is sent.

If you are running a self-hosted WordPress blog the best plugin for integrating a tweet button and other social buttons is Digg Digg.

Digg Digg is the plugin that installed the social sharing buttons that follow you as you scroll down this page.

20. Do a Charity Promotion

Drew Carey (@Drewfromtv) is paying $1 for every follower he gets, up until 1,000,000 followers.

This strategy has netted him over 600,000 followers already, and plenty of publicity.

21. Create a Great Looking Twitter Background

Most people still use the web based version of Twitter, which means they will see your background when surfing to your profile.

If you take the time to create a custom Twitter background people will notice and you will get more follows as a result.

Check out the tool Themelon for millions of color combinations.

22. Pick a Short and Memorable Twitter User Name

The shorter your username the better.

Many people still use the classic style retweets, so having a shorter username means that more people will be able to retweet your tweets.

23. Tweet Often

When I met @unmarketing he told me the month he became really big on Twitter he tweeted about 10,000 times.

By tweeting all the time you might piss a bunch of people off, but the ones who don’t unfollow you will be much more familiar with you, and will be more likely to retweet you.

How effective this strategy is depends entirely on what you tweet about, of course.

The more you tweet, the better chance you have of your tweets being seen by people who do not follow you yet.

The more recent your tweets are, the more relevant it will seem for someone to follow you.

24. Run a Contest

Running a contest is a great way to attract new followers. Offer a good prize and make sure you clearly communicate the rules of entry. If your prize is related to your brand then it can also help find targeted followers who are interested in your area of expertise.

Be creative! Try giving away an experience, a vacation, a meeting with a celebrity. Contests draw attention! Offer multiple prizes, including a grand prize, 3-5 mid-level prizes, and as many small prizes as you feel like.

Set a hashtag for your contest like#mycontestisawesome or #winmystuff, and include it in every tweet about your contest.

Launch your contest through Twitter and any other mediums you are using. Blogs are great at driving contest traffic, because they can explain the prizes and rules in greater detail.

You can use the conest as an inbound marketing vehicle for your website and award prizes based on who drives the most traffic back to the contest page, thus helping it spread virally! Get contest entrants to use bit.ly links which have built in analytics so that you can track who sends the most traffic.

25. Use Twitter in Your Blog Comments

When replying to posts on other people’s blogs, leave your Twitter name in your reply.

If you are commenting on a disqus comment system (like the one in this post) you can click a twitter icon and share your comment on Twitter.

26.Interact

This is something many new users miss on Twitter. Twitter is not simply a medium to broadcast like television or radio, although some people do drop the ball and use it this way. Twitter is meant for both broadcasting AND interaction.

Answer back to people who tweet you. People who talk to you will be much more likely to follow you.

Whenever someone tweets or retweets me I check to make sure I am following them, and I imagine that many other people check this out as well.

27. Install a Twitter Follow Button

Installing a Twitter button is really easy, it just takes copying and pasting the code, and inserting your username. I have two twitter follow buttons installed into the sidebar of this blog, feel free to use them if you want to see how they work.

28. Add Yourself to Twitter Directories

There are directories like Twellow, wefollow, and several others where you can add your Twitter profile and get more followers.

Wefollow is an especially helpful Twitter directory because it is the largest directory on the web.

There are dozens of directories of Twitter users online, including Twiends, WeFollow, and Twellow, and more.

Add yourself to as many directories as you can find under the proper categories, and you will begin to see some users following you from these sites.

When someone follows you through one of these directories you will receive a notification email from Twitter – if you have these turned on. In these notifications you can see which directory they followed you through.

If you’re using Twitter Marketing software like TweetAdder you’ll want to turn these notifications off because it gets annoying with a few hundred daily emails from Twitter.

29. Write Articles and Place your Twitter Name in the Signature Box

Write articles on your topic of interest and place your Twitter name in the resource box. Submit these articles to places like EzineArticles.com and GoArticles.com.

30. Install a Twitter Widget into Your Website

Did you know that you can add a Twitter widget on LinkedIn that will display your recent tweets? There are many places online that will allow you to display a list of your latest tweets, and these widgets are a great source of new followers!

You can get an official customTwitter widget that works on any site where you can add custom code!

I use publitweet widgets to embed my Twitter stream into my blogs, since these are more powerful than official Twitter widgets and import not only my tweets, but also a preview of the content that was shared if a link was tweeted. See the image to the right for an idea of what these look like, although the design is custom.

31. Link it Up

The more links you have to your twitter profile the more ways there are for people to follow you!

This means online and offline, put a link to your Twitter profile everywhere you can.

Link to Twitter from Facebook, from your blog, from your guest posts, from your videos, in your email signature, and anywhere else you can think of.

Usually if you just put an “@” sign in front of your username people will understand that you are listing your Twitter name.

32. Guest Blogging

Even if you don’t have a blog of your own, you can easily gain notoriety by writing posts for other blogs. Running a blog is hard work, and most people and companies welcome well written posts to give them a break. If you do score an opportunity to guest post, link to your blog if you like, but be sure to link to your Twitter account as well. Some people will follow you if they liked the post.

This strategy works very well if you can give readers an incentive to follow you. Will they hear about more posts like the one you wrote? Is it the only way to find all of your guest posts? Do you tweet the location of buried treasure on International Talk like a Pirate Day?

Give them a reason to follow you, and you will be amazed at how effective this strategy can be.

33. Be Funny

Laughter is the best medicine. Funny and witty tweets retweet very well.

34. Sign up for my free 7 day eCourse

Enroll in my free 7 day twitter eCourse and you will receive awesome twitter tips and tricks by email that will enable you build a powerful twitter presence that will help you get many more followers.

35. Participate in #FollowFriday

Throughout the week keep track of the people who retweet and make a positive impression on you and reward them with a #FollowFriday recommendation.

More often than not people you recommend for #FollowFriday will return the favor.

36. Do podcasts

Podcasting is a great way to get attention, it showcases your expertise, and helps build an audience.

Creating your own podcast is simple. All you have to do is download a program such as Audacity (or, if you’re on a Mac, GarageBand works well.)

Record your audio, edit out long pauses or background noise, and make sure to mention that people should follow you on Twitter!

37. Webinars

Webinars are essentially online seminars, so the exposure is similar to an offline seminar. The advantage of webinars is that they are typically for mixed online/offline audiences, and in addition to online and/or telephone audio, you can also display on screen slideshows and links with the appropriate software or service.

This is a perfect medium to get Twitter followers, since you can link directly to your Twitter account during and after the webinar for attendees. You can begin by creating a template for your slideshow that includes your Twitter information in the bottom right hand corner. Many attendees will automatically look in that corner of the presentation last, while listening to your information. It is the perfect place to put information that you would like them to act on, as they will be available to follow you during the presentation.

Encourage Twitter users to follow you throughout the presentation, offering more tips, tricks, reports, discounts, and offers via Twitter.

If you plan on hosting a Q&A session ask people to follow you on Twitter and tweet their questions. Not only will this get you immediate followers from the participants, but their followers will see the questions being posed to you as well, and this can lead to more followers.

38. Do customer support through Twitter

Now, we’re not suggesting you throw away your helpdesk, but add Twitter as a support channel. You may find that users are already tweeting questions at you. Most good helpdesk software already offers Twitter integration.

Some people like posting support questions via Twitter, as they feel the public nature of it will lead to a faster response. Some prefer using private channels and may not use Twitter, but adding it will win you some new followers providing you offer good timely support through it.

39. Integrate Twitter with Your Videos

People love to watch videos. Creating video tutorials for your area of expertise is a great way to get exposure for yourself, and your Twitter presence.

Place your Twitter username in various places in the video, and you can even use a watermark or video annotation so that your twitter username is constantly visible.

If you have a YouTube channel make sure to include a link to your twitter profile on your channel page.

Offline Ways to Get More Followers

40. Rent a Billboard

If you are really ambitious, rent a billboard and put your Twitter name on it. This is what Ashton Kutcher did when he was racing against CNN to be the first to 1,000,000 followers.

This strategy worked for Ashton and I’m sure it could work for you too if you have a few thousand dollars to cover the cost.

41. Word of Mouth

Tell your friends and relatives to follow you on Twitter.

Bring Twitter up in person when you are chatting with people. If they are on Twitter convince them to follow you, if they are not on Twitter convince them to join.

Blog about your Twitter account

On the same note, if you do have a blog, write a post about your Twitter account. Post about how you like Twitter, how you hate Twitter, different types of Twitter people and posts you like or dislike, who you follow… Anything, really. Make sure to mention your Twitter account (and suggest that people follow you) at least once in the article.

You can also write a post about what you would say with more than 140 characters to certain Twitter celebrities. Do you wish you could tell Shaq about your “random act of Shaqness”? Want to get @NotTinaFey to read your latest comedy script? Social media is all about being unique – find something that is memorable, and gently remind people that your tweets are memorable, too!

42. Speak at Conferences

While most people already know that the exposure you can gain from speaking at conferences is great for business, few people bother promoting their social media accounts through these mediums. The next time you’re giving a presentation at a seminar or conference, mention your Twitter account. If you are using presentation software or an on-screen image during your speech, display your username on screen.

If your audience likes what you have to say, they may just follow you later! You can even host the conference yourself, including your Twitter information on conference tickets and tweet the events as they happen. When it comes to live events, the sky is the limit!

43. Print your Twitter Name on Your Business Card

Twitter promotion does not have to be limited to the online world. Include your Twitter name right on your business card you will be able to get several new followers.

44. Host Tweetups

Most of the time, offline strategies involve people finding you offline and connecting with you online afterwards. Tweetups are exactly the opposite – they allow you the opportunity to connect with Twitter users in person, even if you have never met before. Because the group of Twitter users that meet is often diverse (and often inviting their own followers and friends,) you will likely gain at least a few new followers from a tweetup.

You can start a tweetup simply by asking around your circle of twitter followers. Offer to host the event at a coffee shop, conference, restaurant, or even your offices. Create a dedicated web page or blog post for the event, a hash tag (for example, #mytweetup) so that users can follow the event, and encourage tweeters to share with their friends and followers as well. You can gain large amounts of exposure from something this simple!

45. Radio interviews

Much like speaking at conferences, radio interviews are a great way to get attention. Whether you’re through AM/FM, satellite, internet, or even Blog Talk Radio, the interviews can be used to gain some positive and wildly popular PR. To be interviewed on the radio, you need to make yourself available as an expert. Watch your local stations for requests (they often publish them via social media,) list yourself in expert directories, and even contact the station directly and ask if they have any upcoming opportunities for experts.

While you won’t have a visual medium to display your Twitter account, repeating your Twitter username a few times during your interview can help you gain new followers. You can also use your interview time to promote contests and upcoming events through your Twitter feed, which is sure to get you some new followers in no time at all!

46. Newspaper interviews and articles

If you can somehow tie your business or industry to a current event, it can be easy to get an article in the traditional press that includes your information. You can distribute your own article via press release, or make yourself available for expert interviews through directories and by approaching the media directly.

If you have the resources, hiring a public relations firm can be a great help with this. They can get you expert interviews in many newspapers and national publications, and because of their existing relationship with the editor, you will often be allowed to include a bit more company information than the average submission.

If you don’t have the resources (or just prefer DIY methods), write a compelling press release that ties your business to a current event. Distribute it to the local media, and call to follow up. Create a media kit or press kit for distribution when someone asks for information about you and your business. Getting interviews in traditional press isn’t difficult for a small business owner, but it does take an investment of time and some persistence.

When you do gain some media exposure, while most companies are just now beginning to include links to their website in the article, you can include links to social media accounts like Twitter to get new followers and exposure for your expertise.

47. Networking events

If you run a business, you likely have a local networking event that you do or can attend. Publicizing your Twitter profile at events like these through your business cards, stickers, and stamps can gain you a large number of targeted Twitter followers very quickly! Be sure to offer an incentive for following you, such as free reports, discounts, or updates.

48. Write a book/eBook

Few things say “I’m an expert in my field” like being a published author. While print titles still have more clout with traditional audiences, eBooks like those for Kindle and other e-readers are gaining popularity. If you’re looking to establish yourself as an expert, traditional publishing houses may get you the most notoriety, but self-publishing with a good public relations agent can get you similar results today.

Being sure to include your social media links – including Twitter – is a great way to allow readers to connect with your expertise after reading your book. Start by offering your Twitter ID on the inside front cover, where many bookstore shoppers will look for your bio; then include your information on the back cover, in the introduction, and throughout the book.

If you are willing to think outside of the box, you can even include your Twitter ID in the footer of every page. Even if they don’t follow you immediately after reading the book, they will subconsciously recognize your account in the future and be more willing to follow you if they come across your name again.

Several prominent social media celebrities even use Twitter to launch subsequent titles, so don’t overlook the possibilities here. The opportunities are endless!

49. Research and publish a report

Reports and white papers are still an essential form of communication for industries and markets around the globe. If you have any data or research to share, or even just helpful ideas, publishing a report or whitepaper can successfully get you the attention of industry leaders, media, and yes – social media.

You can get your white papers and reports distributed by trade magazine distributors across North America, which will often give you the customers’ information. Offer the report or whitepaper on your own website, as well as on Twitter itself. You may find that the link to your report gets retweeted, getting you valuable exposure!

As with other forms of offline publishing, be sure to utilize your author’s bio and include links to Twitter and other profiles.

50. Magazine Articles

Like newspaper articles, magazine articles can get you great attention from readers and potential customers. Unlike newspapers, however, they can be much longer in length, explain things in much more depth, and offer more opportunities for promotion.

Go to the website for your favorite industry magazine and look for a link to their publishing schedule. There, magazines will list topics that they are going to be covering in the coming months. If you feel you can contribute to one of these topics, contact the editor with a proposal for your article. Do not send the whole article! Editors need a quick glance to determine if your content will be worthy, before approving you to begin work.

The great thing about working with magazines is that in certain circumstances, you can even get paid for your submission. How many opportunities do you have that allow your advertising to pay you? Magazine editors will typically allow for a longer author’s bio, offer more opportunities for promotion, and may even extend offers for inexpensive advertising in exchange for your contribution.

Other Ideas

An inexpensive way to spread your Twitter username is with a rubber stamp customized with your Twitter ID on it. Once you have this stamp simply stamp your ID on everything. No new printing costs, no need to change the receipt printer – just stamp, stamp, stamp away!

As you can see, offline methods for finding Twitter followers are only limited by your imagination. Pubs and restaurants can publish their ID on coasters and napkins.

Magnets with your Twitter ID are a great “leave behind” for moving companies, and custom Twitter signs inserted into baked goods are a great way for a local bakery to get their information in front of consumers. Don’t be shy with your Twitter account; if you really want to gain a large, targeted following, you have to go after it!

Feature columns

Even more powerful than individual newspaper or magazine articles are feature columns. If you have the dedicated time, offering to write a feature column for a magazine or newspaper will not only assist the editor with their workload but give you more opportunities for promotion.

Often times, feature columnists will get their bio published with the column monthly as well as in the front of the magazine with the other staff writers. Including your Twitter link along with your other biographical information in the magazine can get you more followers while building expert status.

Use a Quick Response (QR) Code

There are several services online that allow you to create quick response or QR codes. These codes are simple square barcodes that are gaining massive popularity with smartphone users, as they can be used to direct any phone to a specific web address just by taking a picture.

Create a QR code that links to your Twitter profile, and put it up everywhere – on your website, on your business cards, on any signage outside of your office or store, or anywhere else you can think of that might attract enough attention to be worth a snapshot.

Advertise on Twitter

One of the most effective ways to promote yourself is on twitter itself. They offer solutions for promoting your profile, promoting your tweets, or promoting trends.

Each method gives you a slightly different way to get your message across. This form of promotion is really powerful when used in combination with one of the other methods listed below, such as running a contest.

Promoting your profile will help you grow your following directly, while promoting tweets and trends will allow you to drive other initiatives used to get exposure for yourself.

Offer discounts and deals to followers

While many of these methods are about print advertising and getting in front of large amounts of people, never underestimate the power of your office or retail location if you have one.

Offer daily deals, specials, coupons, or discounts to customers who follow you on Twitter.

Especially for retail and food service businesses, your physical location is an ideal place to publicize your social media links. Imagine walking into a store, and seeing their Twitter ID posted on the counter? Or walking into a restaurant and seeing their Twitter ID on the menu?

Quality is More Important Quantity

Remember that quality is more important than quantity. 1000 unengaged, irrelevant followers is much less useful to you than 100 followers that regularly talk with you, reply to you, retweet your content, and encourage others to follow you.

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Here it is, the first in my training series for Twitter. This post will be covering the basics of what Twitter is and how it works, so if you’re already up and running with Twitter, bear with me while I get everybody else up to speed. We’ve got 10 more parts to go, and trust me, we’ll be getting into some more complicated things. But in order to get set up right, you’ve got to start at the beginning. And who knows, even if you’ve been using Twitter for a while, you still might learn something!

What Is Twitter?

Twitter is an extremely fast growing social media network with currently over 1 million members but this is expected to explode! All communications are limited to 140 characters, with no special coding or labeling, although you can use links (but the links are changed into smaller redirect links if they are too long).

Twitter describes themselves as a service for friends, family and coworkers to stay connected through the exchange of quick frequent answers to the same question – what are you doing?

In countries all around the world, people follow the sources most relevant to them and access information via Twitter as it happens—from breaking world news to updates from friends.

How Twitter Works

Twitter offers a simple way for people to connect. Twitter asks one question… “What are you doing?”

Answers must be under 140 characters in length and can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web.

Twitter’s core technology is a device agnostic message routing system with rudimentary social networking features. They accept messages from SMS, web, mobile web, instant message, or from third party API projects.

Twitter’s engineering team works with an open-source web application framework called Ruby on Rails. The web site and user interface were designed using Omnigraffle and Photoshop. They like to make frequent changes to the interface, and Rails provides them with a skeleton code frameworks so they don’t have to re-do the whole site every time they add or change something like a sign in form or a picture upload feature. I realize that 90% of you do not care about this but now you know

Twitter has a very simple interface for interacting with other users – simply type your message in to a text box, and click to send it out. It then goes into Twitter’s database, is sent out to all that area following you, will appear on your own homepage, your profile and on any cross-platform third party application you might be using (I will get into much more details on this later).

The other place that it appears is on the public timeline, which has all the tweets that everybody is posting. This moves really fast – most of the posts that you will see have been posted in the last 5 seconds.

Although Twitter asks you what you’re doing, most users use it for something other than that. You can share interesting links (yours or otherwise) with other people. You can set it up for Twitter to send out an update every time you add a new post to your blog PLUS more.

How Twitter Can Work For Your Business

Twitter can put your business’s message in front of thousands of people, instantly. If you can harness this power, and use it effectively, Twitter can help you promote your brand and add depth to your online identity.
Whether or not you’re experienced in social marketing, Twitter gives you a simple, easy-to-use way of interacting with your audience. Even if you’ve already done some social marketing and been successful, Twitter can still help you expand your audience and grow your circle of influence.

One thing to always keep in mind when using Twitter, however is this: this is a social tool, not an advertising outlet. You can’t just put messages out there that are just hard sells and expect people to keep following you. You need to put some time and effort into growing your community, interact with your followers (not selling things) and follow other people, and establish your credibility within Twitter before you start promoting yourself.

If you do it right, you can use your Twitter messages to direct your followers to check out your products, blogs, affiliate programs, or anything else that you want to promote. You can use Twitter to both promote things to your current contacts, as well as attract new business.

The best thing about twitter (in my opinion anyway) is they are much more open to developers creating third party applications (FaceBook recently changed to be more like Twitter)… the great thing about this is there are loads of tools that take 90% of the repetitive daily work out of using Twitter. This does not mean you can set and forget… that does not work with social sites… but you can do a lot of things automatically that are highly effective but time intensive.

A few of my absolute favorite 3rd Party Twitter Tools (I will be talking about these over the next couple weeks) are…